Thursday’s ad is for O’Keefe’s, from 1948. Part of Carling O’Keefe’s “Moulders of ‘Canada Unlimited'” series, whatever that means, the ad features a painting by Rex Woods showing the stereotypical “industrial worker” taking the bus to work. According to the ad, they’re the men “moulding a new era for Canada.”
Today’s beer video is from the National Geographic channel series Megafactories (a.k.a. Ultimate Factories). This show features one of the breweries making Budweiser, and aired in 2007. It was Season 1, Episode 4 in the series.
A new story in the Washington Post’s Health, Science & Environment section, entitled Human nose can detect at least 1 trillion odors — far more than thought, says study of smell, appears to upend conventional wisdom about the number of smells that humans can identify. The general number has been around 10,000 as long as I can remember. By contrast, we can see “a few million different colors” and our ears can take in around 340,000 different tones. So while smell used to be a lot farther down on the sensory spectrum, this study would appear to rocket our sense of smell to the front of the line. For beer lovers, that can’t be a surprise, because our nose conveys so much more about a beer than seeing or hearing it can, and not even tasting it comes close, as any person who’s had a head cold can tell you, after trying to taste a beer without a working sense of smell.
The study itself, Humans Can Discriminate More than 1 Trillion Olfactory Stimuli, will be published in the journal Science. Here’s the abstract:
Humans can discriminate several million different colors and almost half a million different tones, but the number of discriminable olfactory stimuli remains unknown. The lay and scientific literature typically claims that humans can discriminate 10,000 odors, but this number has never been empirically validated. We determined the resolution of the human sense of smell by testing the capacity of humans to discriminate odor mixtures with varying numbers of shared components. On the basis of the results of psychophysical testing, we calculated that humans can discriminate at least 1 trillion olfactory stimuli. This is far more than previous estimates of distinguishable olfactory stimuli. It demonstrates that the human olfactory system, with its hundreds of different olfactory receptors, far outperforms the other senses in the number of physically different stimuli it can discriminate.
It will be very interesting to see if further studies corroborate this finding, but frankly it makes a lot of sense (no pun intended).
Science also has a short interview with Andreas Keller, one of the scientists who worked on the study, where he explains some of the reasons his team thinks that their study has shown we’re capable of so many more aromas than previously thought.
There was a news item a few days ago that recently a fifth grade teacher in Michigan offered students non-alcoholic beer — O’Douls — as part of “a lesson on colonial times,” with the intention to “represent ale common in the 1700s and consumed because of the scarcity of clean water.” Sounds harmless enough. No students were forced to try it, but they had the opportunity to sample it if they wished to. What could go wrong?
What the teacher didn’t know is that apparently it’s actually illegal to give a minor in Michigan a non-alcoholic beer. The law was passed back in the 1950s, when people were even nuttier about alcohol than they are today, if that’s possible, but Michigan did pass a law making it illegal for minors to drink non-alcoholic beer. Here’s the entirety of the law:
THE MICHIGAN PENAL CODE (EXCERPT)
Act 328 of 1931750.28 Cereal beverage with alcoholic content; furnishing to minors, penalty.
Sec. 28.
Any person who shall sell, give or furnish to a minor, except upon authority of and pursuant to a prescription of a duly licensed physician, any cereal beverage of any alcoholic content under the name of “near beer”, or “brew”, or “bru”, or any other name which is capable of conveying the impression to the purchaser that the beverage has an alcoholic content, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
History: Add. 1957, Act 283, Eff. Sept. 27, 1957
How Kafkaesque. The state defines what non-alcoholic means then still makes it illegal even if it’s within their own definition, and if it’s 0.5% or below, Michigan state’s Liquor Control Commission doesn’t even regulate it. So alcohol in cough syrup. No problem. Non-alcoholic wine? Go for it. A cereal beverage? Heavens no. That’s going too far.
And perhaps more curious, the law can be read to suggest that what’s at issue is giving the “impression” that the drink has alcohol in it, not that it really does. Because it seems like you could create a non-alcoholic beer within the legal definition but call it something random, like “Barley Pop” or “Brown Cow” and not be in violation of this law if you gave some to your children. The name seems more important than the alcoholic content. Why would that be the case?
When I was a kid, the only reason near beer existed was for kids. No sane adult would drink it. My first taste of beer was from a can of near beer that my parents bought for me when I expressed interest in trying beer, which was the case for some of my friends, too. It was horrible. I think that may have been the point, I don’t know.
The Flint Journal reports that the school sent letters home to parents after they discovered the “incident” but according to school district Superintendent Ed Koledo. “Nobody complained to the teacher, principal or me,” or to the police, and no disciplinary measures were taken against the teacher. Despite nobody being upset in the least, you’d think a nuclear blast had gone off, the way they talk about it.
“We talked to the teacher and said this was an inappropriate choice,” Koledo said. “There were a lot better choices to represent a colonial-era drink than what was chosen here.”
Really, what would have been a better choice to represent what the vast majority of people drank during the colonial era? And he says “a lot of better choices.” A lot? Really? I can’t wait to see the list.
“I know there was no intent to expose anyone to harm, just poor thought in this situation.”
Seriously, “poor thought?” It’s non-alcoholic beer for chrissakes, and a few kids had a sip of it in a controlled environment, not a back alley clutching a paper bag. And it was a sip. What is a sip? A teaspoon? Half an ounce? Oh, the horror.
Linden schools are drug and alcohol-free zones and Koledo said he did not know if O’Doul’s beer would constitute a violation.
Again, are we really going to split hairs because it has 0.5% alcohol (or less) in it? So is cough medicine allowed on campus? I’m pretty sure caffeine can be considered a drug, so I hope they’re going to remove the coffee maker from the teacher’s lounge. Up until the 1970s, schools in Belgium served students table beer every day.
So how exactly did this end up being a news story?
Wednesday’s ad is for The Kamm & Schellinger Brewing Co., from Mishawaka, Indiana. It’s from the 1880s, and seems like a very confident ad, what with having a roaring lion straddling the entire Earth and the slogan “Challenge the World.” Since chances are you’ve never heard of them, I think they may not have won that challenge. World 1, Kamm & Schellinger 0.
Today’s beer video is from the National Geographic channel series Megafactories (a.k.a. Ultimate Factories). This show features one of the breweries making Heineken, and aired in 2011. It was Season 5, Episode 10 in the series.
Tuesday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1942. Schlitz used that bear in a number of their ads from around that time period. This one is apparently a graduate (of what I don’t know) and possibly majored in geography, as he’s using a pointer to show us the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on a globe. After all, Schlitz was “The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous.”
Today’s beer video is from the National Geographic channel series Megafactories (a.k.a. Ultimate Factories). This show features one of the breweries making Guinness, the one at St. James Gate, it appears, and aired in 2011. It was Season 6, Episode 4 in the series. Even though St. Patrick’s Day was yesterday, I figured even with a hangover, a brewery tour was in order.
Monday’s ad, since it’s St. Patrick’s Day, is for Guinness. This Guinness ad is done in the style of Alphonse Mucha. I have no idea when it was created, but it’s a beautiful ad nonetheless. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
For our 86th Session, our host is Heather Vandenengel, the Beer Hobo. For her topic, she’s chosen Beer Journalism, in other words using your words to write about writing … beer writing, that is. She writes. “It’s time for a session of navel-gazing: I’d like to turn a critical eye on how the media cover the beer industry. And, for a broad definition, I’ll define media as newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs, TV, books and radio.” Here’s what she’s looking for:
What role do beer writers play in the culture and growth of craft beer? Are we advocates, critics, or storytellers? What stories are not getting told and what ones would you like to never hear about again? What’s your beer media diet? i.e. what publications/blogs/sites do you read to learn about industry? Are all beer journalists subhumans? Is beer journalism a tepid affair and/or a moribund endeavor? And if so, what can be done about it?
In the spirit of tipping the hat when someone gets it right, please also share a piece of beer writing or media you love–it doesn’t have to be recent, and it could be an article, podcast, video, book or ebook–and explain a bit about what makes it great. I’ll include links to those articles as well in my roundup for easy access reading.
Here’s her instructions for participating:
Some of the earliest writing about beer, c. 3000-3100 BCE.